To support the continued diversification of Weill Cornell Medicine’s technology portfolio, Enterprise Innovation has created an overarching gap funding superstructure to advance innovation and commercialization opportunities.
The Enterprise Innovation Catalyst Fund, established through a generous gift from Board of Fellows Vice Chair Richard Ruben and his wife, Amy Ruben, will serve as an umbrella for three programs that fill the early-stage funding gap before any industry and venture investment.
“With the Catalyst Fund, Enterprise Innovation can bridge critical gaps for innovations across multiple asset pillars at different development stages and expand our capacity to retain expert consultants and provide educational programming to our innovators,” said Dr. Lisa Placanica, senior managing director of the Center for Technology Licensing at Weill Cornell Medicine. “This expanded funding vehicle is instrumental in supporting our mission to bring medical innovations to the marketplace.”
2024 Awardee Dr. Paraskevi (Evi) Giannakakou (Provided)
The Enterprise Innovation Catalyst Fund will introduce two new programs and house two pre-existing de-risking programs, all of which will be organized into three discrete tiers.
The Proto Stage Award will fund device and digital health projects and other early-stage projects on a rolling basis to validate preliminary proof-of-concept ideas and expedite the development of prototypes for commercial advancement.
The Breakout Stage Award will allow Enterprise Innovation to provide larger funding awards to projects that require specific commercial de-risking experiments necessary for the project to advance to partnership. Enterprise Innovation will leverage external industry and investment advisors to provide feedback on project design for programs that have previously received encouraging commercial feedback, as well as outsource certain tasks to meet industry requirements.
The Validation Stage Award will benefit projects that have already demonstrated preliminary proof of concept, identified unmet need in the market and developed a plan for commercialization. This award will serve as a reimagining of the Daedalus Fund for Innovation, which was established in 2014 to support early-stage, applied and translational research projects that have clear, near-term commercial potential. It will also incorporate the Selma and Lawrence Ruben Validation Stage Awards, which Richard Ruben and his sisters Lenore Ruben and Shelly Kivell established in 2017 as the Selma and Lawrence Ruben Science to Industry Bridge Fund. Prior to their renaming, the Daedalus Fund and Ruben Fund have supported 53 principal investigators to de-risk and advance 66 research projects.
Enterprise Innovation will facilitate proposal submission and review processes for all three funding tiers.
Request for proposals for the Validation Stage Award will open soon. Contact Dr. Louise Sarup at lss248@cornell.edu if you’d like to learn more about the EI Catalyst Fund.